{"id":97215,"date":"2025-11-24T01:00:51","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T06:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=97215"},"modified":"2025-11-23T10:14:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T15:14:03","slug":"qotd-talking-like-a-marxist-living-like-a-maharaja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/11\/24\/qotd-talking-like-a-marxist-living-like-a-maharaja\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Talking like a Marxist, living like a Maharaja"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Don’t worry, this isn’t a post about Epstein. Or, really, honey pots of any kind, and especially not gay ones. But even though “how fucking obvious<\/em> should it have been to Mr. VIP that he was probably being set up for blackmail etc?” is a rhetorical question, rhetorical questions have answers … and in this case, I really believe the answer tells us something about Our Insect Overlords.<\/p>\n

My google-fu isn’t strong enough to come up with this particular piece of Pop Culture Kayfabe (didn’t they once open for Exploding Vagina Candle?), but I saw some comedian, my old tired brain says Dave Chappelle though it probably wasn’t, talking about how hard it must’ve been to be Prince’s personal assistant. So much of that job would boil down to “trying to convince your boss that the impossible is, in fact, impossible”.<\/p>\n

Along the lines of “No, Prince, I can’t arrange for you to ride a giraffe around Central Park. For one thing, it’s 3am, all the zoos are closed …”<\/p>\n

It was funny at the time, but considerably less so now, because Our Betters are really like that now. And they’re ALL like that. I’m pretty sure I told y’all about the time I fixed the toilet at a faculty party. It was in this beautiful “restored” Victorian house (“restored” meaning “it has all the most ostentatiously expensive Victorian ephemera, with all the most ultra-modern conveniences”). The toilet wouldn’t stop running if you flushed it without following this elaborate handle-jiggling procedure that they’d discovered over weeks of trial and error, then carefully wrote down and taped to the top of the tank. Due to scheduling conflicts they weren’t able to get the “restoration” specialist out there to look at it for another month or so …<\/p>\n

I’m nobody’s idea of a plumber, but even I can recognize it when the little chain loops around the plug and keeps the float from rising all the way. So I finished my business, took the lid off the tank, unwrapped the chain, and told my hosts to go ahead, it’s “fixed” now. Carefully explaining what I did and why. You don’t even need a regular plumber, let alone some period-specialist interior decorator, I told them. Just … unloop the chain. Takes five seconds. Costs nothing.<\/p>\n

They, and everyone else at the party, were aghast<\/em>. Not at my mastery of the arcane details of plumbing, but that I’d fixed<\/em> something. You know, with my hands<\/em>. With that one little act \u2014 something so simple, it’d need to be ten times more complicated to even qualify as “basic plumbing” \u2014 I’d excommunicated myself from The Anointed. It’s just not done<\/em>, old sock \u2014 we’re afraid you’re no longer our sort. Only Dirt People “fix” things.<\/p>\n

That’s their mental world. Z Man used to talk about having worked for a Congressman as a kid, and having to mow the guy’s lawn. For whatever reason the lawn service didn’t make it on the day of some soiree, and none of the guy’s staffers \u2014 the very best and brightest, Ivy League grads all \u2014 could figure out how to start the mower. They’d never done it before. They’d never even seen<\/em> it done.<\/p>\n

If that’s the world you live in, is it any surprise they fall for the honey pot?<\/p>\n

In their world, things just … happen. Electricity comes from the wall socket (remember Pete Buttigieg actually saying that, re: EVs? I can’t seem to find a clip for some reason<\/em>, but I’m sure it happened). Food comes from the store. Indeed, it doesn’t even come from the store, it comes from the fridge<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You probably think I’m joking, but I’ve seen it at close range. Indeed I’ve experienced it myself, in India, where one simply doesn’t live without servants. Yes, in the very best Colonel Blimp style. It’s not a race thing, it’s a class thing \u2014 you will grievously offend your university sponsors, without whom no work can be done in-country, by not living in “middle class” style while you’re there. Which means they hook you up with servants; you tell them where you’re staying (and of course you follow their suggestions; you do not<\/em> browse the classifieds in Delhi or Mumbai), and pretty soon Choti just … shows up.<\/p>\n

N.b. that “Choti” isn’t her personal name. It’s a nickname, a pretty demeaning one \u2014 it literally means “shorty”. Little girl. Imagine you have some random chick coming into your house to do all your shopping and cleaning and laundry for you, and that’s what you call her, to her face: “Some chick”. Because they’re all<\/em> called that.<\/p>\n

At first it’s extremely uncomfortable … and then it’s really, really, really<\/em> fucking nice. Hungry? Don’t worry about it \u2014 you just tell Choti what time you expect to be home for dinner, and it’ll be there. You just step out of your clothes wherever, and leave them there \u2014 they’ll be back tomorrow, laundered and pressed and folded and there in the drawer. Need to go somewhere? If you’re in a real hurry you can go down to the street and grab an autorickshaw \u2014 they’re everywhere \u2014 but if you want to arrive in style (which is to say, not drowning in your own sweat, because it’s 100 degrees out and autorickshaws don’t have air conditioning), you call a car.<\/p>\n

How much does all this cost? Don’t worry about it. No, really \u2014 don’t worry about it. Don’t ask. For one thing, it’s impolite \u2014 yes yes, of course<\/em> all Indian university people are not just Marxists, but usually batshit insane Naxalites<\/a>, by which I mean they’re batshit by Academic Marxist standards. If you think that stops them from exploiting the poor Chotis of the world like the most obnoxious maharaja, then you, my friend, need to find another blog; you obviously don’t grok the first thing about Leftism.<\/p>\n

But more important even than the social element is the fact that Indian currency is worthless. Don’t worry about it, because it’s a rounding error. I am not independently wealthy, and academic grants are not generous (except when you get a shitload of them, and launder the fuck out of them, which is what several big important University offices are designed to do … but individual<\/em> grants are not generous, usually). It’s just that the exchange rate is like 200 : 1. Have you ever heard the terms “lakh<\/em>” and “crore<\/em>“? In India, cars, for example, are priced in lakhs<\/em> and crores<\/em>. If your Mercedes-Benz costs one crore<\/em> rupees \u2014 that’s 10 million \u2014 then whatever you’re paying Choti doesn’t even qualify as a few pennies per day; Sally Struthers weeps.<\/p>\n

(Anyone else remember those ads? The Christian Children’s Fund; they were everywhere in the 80s. Wonder what happened to it? Those ads seem to have been completely scrubbed from YouTube, although of course my google-fu is weak).<\/p>\n

See what I mean? All that \u2014 cooking, cleaning, bespoke meals, car service, etc. etc. \u2014 “costs” what amounts to a handful of Monopoly money (like all Third World countries, India makes their currency look like toucan vomit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yep, all with the same picture of Gandhi-ji on the front).<\/p>\n

Trust me: after a certain point, you really don’t<\/em> worry about it. Everybody with me? And yes, I know I sound like a complete dick right about now \u2014 that’s the point. You end up acting like a dick, even when you try not to, because you can’t not. I mean that quite literally. You would insult everybody \u2014 your sponsors, Choti, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker \u2014 if you tried to do any of this yourself. It’s not done<\/em>. And because it’s not done, you have no idea what anything really costs; you don’t even have any idea how to start finding out.<\/p>\n

In short, and in the simplest possible terms: For any reasonable value of it, if you want it, you just tell a guy, and it appears.<\/p>\n

That’s the world they live in. Now, it’s important to note that I didn’t try this with, uhhhh, outcall massage services and the like. Nor hard drugs. But I don’t doubt that I could’ve made that happen, with very little effort \u2014 I assume you just tell your driver, the way (I’ve heard) it’s done here, with cabbies and so forth. Or you just go down to the liquor store. Despite their prudish public image, Indians drink like fish; they just don’t buy it themselves. They send their guy for that (the male version of Choti, colloquially known as “Raju”, although for whatever reason that is an insult, where “Choti” isn’t). If you go down to the liquor store personally, you’ll be the only guy there who isn’t a version of Raju, so you’ll be spoiled for choice. I assume all you have to do is pick a Raju, flash him a discreet handful of Monopoly money, and let him take care of it.<\/p>\n

Severian, “I Love the Honey Pot!”, Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2025-08-18.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t worry, this isn’t a post about Epstein. Or, really, honey pots of any kind, and especially not gay ones. But even though “how fucking obvious should it have been to Mr. VIP that he was probably being set up for blackmail etc?” is a rhetorical question, rhetorical questions have answers … and in this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,23,41,13],"tags":[1088,1420,262,912,1020,1462,764],"class_list":["post-97215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-india","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-castesystem","tag-classism","tag-culture","tag-privilege","tag-progressives","tag-severian","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-phZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97215"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99229,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97215\/revisions\/99229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}